Authentic Leadership Styles For Project Management In EWS Markets

The Best Leadership Styles for Project Management in EWS Markets

The authentic leadership style to use in the project would be pacesetting and democratic. Compared to commanding, pacesetting allow both the leader and the manager to set objectives during the project and achieve them all together. This kind of leadership style gives rise to performance. Pacesetting advantageously provides the organizational structure as required in the new EWS markets. Since the project manager is needed to assess and updates current arrangements to accommodate the expanded monitor, pacesetting as a style would help the project manager to assign the duty to every essential head of each department. Use of command style of leadership may risk the project. The scared employees may fear for their safety and might be at risk, but at the same time, they would perform due to pressure from the project manager. Since the project in the EWS case study is not a military project but rather a result oriented project the best style of leadership would be pacesetting (Todorovi? et al. 2015).

Democratic would be a perfect second style. Considering that the organization has tried out such projects in foreign places like the Chinese branch. Such collaboration is proof that this company in itself and the surrounding brushes shoulders with experts. Through democracy, the company can engage them so that the professional opinions given by each can quickly solve the problem space created by the project. Although it might be difficult to determine whose decision might be perfect as the project manager, the final decision is always easy to make when there are better options (Todorovi? et al. 2015).

Crawford slip adaptation specifically involves generating as many ideas as possible for the project without evaluating either of the views. With the kind of expertise that is available within the company, it is easier for the head of departments and the leaders to draw ideas about the project. Once a proposal is out on how the project will be conducted with the role that will be played by each person, as the project manager relate the situations with where they might apply best. The significant ones are paired side-by-side giving each the power and the focus for analysis. This technique is a perfect way of getting a lot of ideas within a very short duration of time. With the little duration that the EWS has the method is an ideal way out.

The project manager can also use the success-failure technique. Usually, stakeholders and clients have a criterion of determining how successful a project is. The parameter used include if the project is within the designed quality, time and the predicted budget. As a project manager, one should set targets for each member of the team, as a technique to reach the set goals. When each of them achieves, that is a success without considering what the stakeholders think. At the end of the project when everyone in the project team reaches their target, it will be clear that all the criteria used by the stakeholder to determine the success of the project shall have been duly achieved.

Pacesetting and Democratic Leadership Styles

Since communication should be all overflow from the top stakeholder of the EWS to the lowest positions in the project, there should be the distribution of communications responsibilities. A list of all stakeholders involved with the project will be put down. The project change in the communication process is that in this case, the PM becomes the CEO and all the other stakeholders are answerable to him. He is given the final project report and has to make decisions from the same. Reports are made by the respective heads of the project. Different project heads are responsible for communicating for their teams and making statements regarding budgeting, timing and other valuable information regarding the project. Each team member will be responsible for recording and reporting the field that they specialize for example an accountant is accountable for the project budgeting.

Notice that the EWS project is in a foreign location from other branches and most importantly the headquarters. The project manager must, therefore, employ a unique combination of techniques to use to communicate with the project team. Since the stakeholders are far apart the most important mode to be used is the use of a secure project portal. Chat technology on a project portal will allow all the stakeholder to communicate. The project team can communicate no matter the distance and space of the stakeholders. This method is perfect since the project place is technology enabled. This creates a global environment.

A few face-to-face arranged stakeholder meeting is vital for the project team. Through face to face, it’s a perfect way that ensures commitment. Expressive communication helps in having a two-way conversation with the stakeholders which makes work even more comfortable. It keeps them committed throughout the project (Niazi et al. 2016).

 Reward power gives the ability to the project manager to award the people he works with, give employees what they desire as a way of motivating the team. With the ESW, this reward power is important as a way of ensuring collaborative work among project participants. The first way is by only picking the ones that are willing to go down to Africa for the project (Ramazani & Jergeas, 2015). Many people may be uncomfortable moving from Australia, China, and other locations to the project in Africa, therefore, picking the willing options would be rewarding.

With access to the budget approved for the project, the project manager can motivate the project team by use of project incentives. Project incentives involve giving monetary appreciations each time members of the team achieve a target. Through tagging of a reward for every objective team member can work towards achieving the project objectives within the set time. Hence the project will even go faster and better (Stettina & Hörz, 2015).

Crawford Slip Adaptation and Success-Failure Technique

Reward power can also be used in pairing talents. Certain workers prefer partnering with other colleagues during projects. The best option would be to pair the teams for the projects, especially on legal issues. For the ESW case which happens in a different location with foreign rules, matching the company legal officer with an African legal officer would be a perfect reward for the authorized officer to work on legal issues regarding the country (Hoda & Murugesan, 2016).

The best power as a manager is to exploit reward power which motivates the workers into working properly and impacting on the project’s success.

Evaluation for character approach

As a project manager, it would be appropriate to find out from the project team, the individuals that are self-motivated. 

Create a team that trusts on each other. Once trust is established between employees, they will automatically be transparent and honest with each other building up good teamwork.

Evaluate for leadership skills from the team approach

Some leaders are not managers. Therefore, their skills are essential in making others grow within their team (Desmond, 2014).

Evaluate for project and employee driven decision approach

Individuals with the same drive and motivation are likely to form the same team.

Evaluation for character approach is a method that helps in identifying characters that are self-driven. In theory, the self-managed agile projects sound very good, and from the discussion of the module I realized that everyone loves it based on the advantages. However, in reality, it requires autonomous driven abilities of the involved individuals. If there is an individual who needs PM to hang around them, then they are not fit for this self-managed program (Gold & Vassell, 2015). Based on the class module resources and discussion, self-managed approaches as selected build team work thus easy articulation of the project.  Team work is necessary for a project and a better team for the project can only be built best through the selected approach.    

Evaluation of trust, transparency, and honesty. For a self-managed team to flourish, the team must always trust each other. When the team trusts each other, the success of one becomes the success of all the team members at the end of the project. Honesty and transparency enable the team members to argue ideas until they get to the best options. It also helps in solving any personal issues that might arise among the team members during the project. A member having an issue with another can easily solve the problem (Bolman & Deal, 2017).

Evaluate for leadership skills from the team, a leader knows when to make a decision and when not to call any decisions. The team needs support from the leader to offer guidance, mentorship, and ideas regarding the project. The leader is not a manager but a person with a unique character to offer to the team (Shrivastava & Rathod, 2017).

Distribution of Communication Responsibilities and Stakeholder Meetings

Evaluate for project and employee driven decision, upper- management in a project usually overlook decisions made by team members. They even determine the project goal by themselves ignoring members’ opinions. The team, therefore, has to accommodate the employees so that even if they don’t join in upper decisions, their contribution is felt in the self-managed groups (Zwikael & Smyrk, 2015).

Challenges   

Communication

Improper communication is the first challenge that project face. Giving instructions to the project team is the best way to deliver a project successfully.

Working from different locations can be very difficult. These teams have different challenges, apart from just the stakeholders, new clients and vendors have difficulties to communicate when they are from different locations based on communication barriers. These set of challenges arise from different time zones, complex language and cultural differences.

Steps

Step one

The immediate step towards solving communication challenge is determining the communication flows in the project.

Step two

The next step I will take after identification, is creation and implementation of a collaboration software that will help the members to be in the loop of recent developments of what is taking place during the project (Serrador & Pinto, 2015).

Step three

The perfect solution for a PM would be employing a centralized project management software solution. This management system allows the fast pace of economic information regarding the development of the project. It also gives a chance to the people in the project location advantage over the people in other places (Razzak, 2015).

References

Desmond, C. (2014). Project management tools. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 42(4), 11-12.

Gold, B., & Vassell, C. (2015, November). Using risk management to balance agile methods: A study of the Scrum process. In Knowledge-Based Engineering and Innovation (KBEI), 2015 2nd International Conference on (pp. 49-54). IEEE.

Hoda, R., & Murugesan, L. K. (2016). Multi-level agile project management challenges: A self-organizing team perspective. Journal of Systems and Software, 117, 245-257.

Niazi, M., Mahmood, S., Alshayeb, M., Riaz, M. R., Faisal, K., Cerpa, N., … & Richardson, I. (2016). Challenges of project management in global software development: A client-vendor analysis. Information and Software Technology, 80, 1-19.

Ramazani, J., & Jergeas, G. (2015). Project managers and the journey from good to great: The benefits of investment in project management training and education. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 41-52.

Ramazani, J., & Jergeas, G. (2015). Project managers and the journey from good to great: The benefits of investment in project management training and education. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 41-52.

Razzak, M. A. (2015, July). Knowledge Management in Globally Distributed Agile Projects–Lesson Learned. In Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), 2015 IEEE 10th International Conference on (pp. 81-89). IEEE.

Serrador, P., & Pinto, J. K. (2015). Does Agile work?—A quantitative analysis of agile project success. International Journal of Project Management, 33(5), 1040-1051.

Shrivastava, S. V., & Rathod, U. (2017). A risk management framework for distributed agile projects. Information and software technology, 85, 1-15.

Stettina, C. J., & Hörz, J. (2015). Agile portfolio management: An empirical perspective on the practice in use. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 140-152.

Todorovi?, M. L., Petrovi?, D. ?., Mihi?, M. M., Obradovi?, V. L., & Bushuyev, S. D. (2015). Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in project management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), 772-783.

Zwikael, O., & Smyrk, J. (2015). Project governance: Balancing control and trust in dealing with risk. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), 852-862.